WASHINGTON – An orbiting NASA telescope is finding whole new worlds of possibilities in the search for alien life, spotting more than 50 potential planets that appear to be in the habitable zone.

In just a year of peering out at a small slice of the galaxy, the Kepler telescope has discovered 1,235 possible planets outside our solar system. Amazingly, 54 of them are seemingly in the zone that could be hospitable to life — that is, not too hot or too cold, Kepler chief scientist William Borucki said.

Until now, only two planets outside our solar system were even thought to be in the "Goldilocks zone." And both those discoveries are highly disputed.

Fifty-four possibilities is "an enormous amount, an inconceivable amount," Borucki said. "It's amazing to see this huge number because up to now, we've had zero."

The more than 1,200 newfound celestial bodies are not confirmed as planets yet, but Borucki estimates 80 percent of them will eventually be verified. At least one other astronomer believes Kepler could be 90 percent accurate.

Just amazing news, I am thrilled and anxious at the discovery. Although I'm not getting my hopes up too high. Our planet has been without intelligent life for billions of years, so if that is evidence enough, then I would say our chances of finding life (intelligent communicable) on these planets are extremely slim. Although I wouldn't say our planet's history is sufficient enough evidence to make that anything close to a hypothesis even. More of a pessimistic guess.
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"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
--Albert Einstein

Will not be long until earth's analog will be spoted, but the universe being 13 billions plus old, it would be not suprising if inteligent life developed on planets orbiting first generation stars; however first generation stars being much bigger than the sun, by nature short live stars might make life hard to develop, but who knows, elements such as carbon, oxgen, iron and othes were spawned on first generation stars,and the basis for life on earth is based on carbon, one of the most common elements in the universe. But life would have a better chance to develop around second generation sun type stars, or even on red dwarfs, such as Gliese. The next step is develop telecopes powerful enough to detect any biomarks on a planet's atmosphere.

Would it make sense to point Kepler towards Gliese 581 g to confirm the data discovered by the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey?

I don’t think Kepler is the right kind of instrument to observe that system: it’s set up to detect planetary transits, which can only be seen when their orbits are more or less edge-on to us. IIANM our perspective on the Gliese 581 system is oblique; its planets were detected by means of radial-velocity measurements.

habitable planets will also take a great deal of time to find using the transit method since the planets in the habitable zone will take around 1 earth year to make a transit.
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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

habitable planets will also take a great deal of time to find using the transit method since the planets in the habitable zone will take around 1 earth year to make a transit.

Around a Sun-like star, yes; but the habitable zone around a red dwarf will be closer in, making for shorter orbits. And such dim stars are the more numerous, by at least an order of magnitude, in this part of the Galaxy.

As far as SETI is concerned we need a well researched study on exactly what conditions must be in place in order for intelligent life to evolve to where and where we might detect it.

Even though there are few main sequence stars within 100 light years from us we will probably be able in the near future to investigate if these conditions exist. I am possibly talking about things such as : stable orbit, stable spin, axis tilt, large moon, ozone layer,oxygen, water, magnetic field, solid land, outer gas giant(s), moderate gravity and who knows what else. Sort of like the things an Exo-biologist might put forth.

We could possibly go to a planet in the Proxima Centuri region with a probe. To me it would be thrilling to know for sure whether or not bacteria , algae or any life form exists outside of our own planet.

The centauri system might be a good candidate for a closer look by a probe sent from earth. Chemical rockets are useless in interstaler trave; so other forms of interstaler travel needs to be considered. Currently, Beamed propulsion such as Light Sails, magnetic sails are feasible techonologies. Down the line, one could forsee the nuclear propolsion via fusion , nuclear pulse propulsion, and even antimatter propulsion. A problem for antimatter is that much of the energy is lost, some in very penetrating high-energy gamma radiation, but especially in neutrinos, so that substantially less than mc2 would actually be available.But putting aside the mode of traveling to Centauri, that system contains two main sequence stars. Centauri A is sun type star, albeit larger, but G2 V type star, and Centauri B smaller than the sun, is also a main sequence star. Since both the principal stars are fairly similar to the Sun (for example, in age and metallicity), they should be targets for SETI,Kepler and for other teams that search for earth's analog.

Would it make sense to point Kepler towards Gliese 581 g to confirm the data discovered by the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey?

I don’t think Kepler is the right kind of instrument to observe that system: it’s set up to detect planetary transits, which can only be seen when their orbits are more or less edge-on to us. IIANM our perspective on the Gliese 581 system is oblique; its planets were detected by means of radial-velocity measurements.

Why not point SETI radio telescopes at the candidate habitable exoplanets discovered by Kepler and listen for incoming transmissions? If they aren't false positives, they could be inhabited, and the inhabitants might already be sending us a message.

Once the Paul Allen Array is completed, will it be more sensative than Aracibo for the listening of artificial interstellar radio signals? SETI should point its ears to the exoplanets located by Kepler,

The Radio Telescope SETI employes is pretty much a contantly scanning platform as the reciever is a reflector that's fixed and the RF head above the dish the only element that can be used to slew. This means the signals are always going to be in transit across the recievers front end and no dwell time of significance is really possible.

If SETI were to be able to get Radio data from a real slweable instrument and one that can be made to dwell on a target for extended periods we might have a more pointable signal source and a better chance. This also requires SETI's effort to be worthwhile enough to get on to the observing agenda. As it is we're piggybacking on other observers time and instrument use. We pretty much are getting whatever others are focusing on. No optimal but the best a low budget operations can get.

The way budgets are being cut in Washington we should be glad we're getting RF signal data of any type.

Now the question is are there any Radio Telescopes willing to give SETI observation time and can the SETI project afford the necessary intrumentations and investigator at a given site to run a collections effort and a focused SETI search agenda... (ie target set, dwell time, etc)

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Never engage stupid people at their level, they then have the home court advantage.....

Doesn't sound like a credible report. To my knowledge no habitable planets have been found let alone habitable by intelligent life.

To the question why haven't they visited I would have said "whom and where are you talking about". Distances between habitable planets will probably prove to insurmountable even if they are in fact inhabited by intelligent beings such as ourselves. But let's wait until we have defined habitible and have found same.

I agree, the distances between any planets out there with intelligent life and Earth, are astronomical. Even if any advanced civilizations in the Milky Way were able to develop crafts that approach light speed; the distance from their star systems to Earth are just too vast. Not to say it is not possible that alien craft(s) could come to earth; that can happen if their technology allows Warmhole principle for example , such as a traversable warmhole. However, lets just say, if the Centauri system does have an advanced civilization, it be would conceivable for them to reach Earth in a matter of a few decades just by using nuclear fusion propultion, antimatter propultion, due to close proximiy of the Centaury system to the Solar system. The Warmhole principle does not break the laws of physics. The best chance of finding out if there is intelligent life in the Milky Way or even on Andromeda, is by scanning for rocky planets with life signatures in their atmospheres, or just listen for radio signals. Maybe this might be too radical, perhaps it is possible to create black holes as a means of propultion for a spacecraft, spacetime would really be warped, but this sounds like theoretical physics.

Wormholes These are just thoretical and no real evidence of them exists. We don't really even know for certain that Blackholes exist although we can see Galactic centers and what appears to be mass accelerating towrds the center of these galaxies and brightening but where its accelerating to and what occurs to the matter is again an unknown to us. Conjecture and theory about Black Holes but we don't know for certain. To make the leap from these tow theories to the possibility of traveling through the universe by entering into a backhole and hoping that there's another end out of which to emerge is again highly speculative, theoretical and without much proof...

Think of it this way. If you were to travel to the proximity of a back hole you would likely be at the edge of the acrition disk. At the edge matter as we know it ceases to exist in it's coherent form as the gravity there is so overhwhelming that atomic structure begins to break down and matter ceases to exist and everything becomes a particle soup. This particle soup continues to condense as the matter nears and moves ever close to the gravitational center of the black hole. As matter condenses nuclear interactions occur including the interactions we can all observe every day on and in the sun. This soup of matter becomes so dense as one nears the center of the black hole that all resemblence to the known universe as we know ceases for that matter. Condensation of the soup carries on and we do not understand or know what takes place amongst that super dense matter (We need to call it something else as it is not matter as we know it) The particles begin to lose their energy and attempt to give it up but the immense gravitational influx disallows any emanation of energy of any kind. Density is such that a humogenous mass of sub primal particles begins to squeeze and densify. Gravity is overwhelming at this point, energy no longer emits, matter and density become infinite, and time ceases as there no longer exists a frame of reference for it.

We arn't anywheres near understanding this. A present or future being that can will be so far beyond us technologicly that we won't recognize it and surely we might be less than a microbe is to us.

Physics has a long way to go towards understanding what goes on in these stellar hell holes. There are examples of where we know matter acretes and doesn't quite make it and forms so called neutron stars. Again theory but some in direct evidence that they may exist. We know that these neutron stars sometimes implode and explode again in the form of massive exposions and some pump out streams of particles (pulsars). Why does this occur and what would happen if the mass gathered was just a might more?

Stars we think dies strangely and collapse upon themselves occasionally. They sometimes create massive energy light shows that leave behind vast expanse of matter, gas, and dust for other interstellar vacuums to gather up to grow their own gravitational wells.

We've got a lot to learn and experience before we jump to wormholes and interstellar travel. How would you create an area in space that would be exempt from the crushing gravity, the hot (radiatively and radioactivly) acretion disk soup, and travel into and through the realm o fa black hole? How would you deal with the loss of time reference as gravity so massive distorts it to non existence...

No, we are but microscopic denizons on the edge of a planets surface, orbiting a star,in a non descript galaxy, one of billions and billions of galaxies akin to the proverbial pinhead of water in an ocean of space and time amd matter. We matter not. So I don't think we're going to jump any wormholes and hitchhike across the galaxies anytime soon..

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Never engage stupid people at their level, they then have the home court advantage.....

Plausible arguments set forth on the difficulty of implamentation of Traversable Wormholes or blackholes for interstaller treveling. I do agree that once matter falls into the event horizon,it will not escape the gravity of the singularity. Higly unlikely that humans could harness the power of a black hole for space traveling, something called spagettization will stop metter from falling into the singularity in one piece; a human falling onto a blackhole would experience this phenomenon. Sag A in the Milkyway is probably a supermassive blackhole, nothing else can explain the imense power of this object other than being a blackhole. For example, neutron stars contain the densest known matter that is directly observable. One teaspoon of neutron star material weighs six billion tons. The pressure in the star's core is so high that most of the charged particles, electrons and protons, merge resulting in a star composed mostly of uncharged particles called neutrons, Cassiopeia A is an example of such a star. It might difficult to observe a Traversable Wormhole, however by starting by looking for an Einstein ring; light source from another universe. So who's to say that civilizations millions of years older than us have not been able to harness such cosmological phonemenon for the purpose of space travelling.

To date, the telescope on the Kepler spacecraft has detected 1,235 planet candidates, and while Earth-bound telescopes are trying to determine if 54 of those planets may have conditions that could harbor life, one unique planetary system may have been uncovered.

Unique because it's the first time scientists have discovered what may be two planets sharing the same orbit of their home sun, New Scientist reports.

Cool. Now we can look for "RFI" on those planets. Too bad we don't have a 3-D skymap (Star Charts) so we can get a fix on those "RFI". I intended to see RF (Radio Frequencies) not "C"ommunicate (CETI vs SETI) with them. Its possible, just like acoustic signals on the Earths Oceans.

are those " earht like planets " discovered by keppler orbiting G type stars or red dwards; life in planets around red dwards might be difficult because of hight radiation output levels that red dwarfs have. Is keppler capable of blocking the star's light thus observing a planet.